Recommended Reading
BY ALPER ÖZKAN (MSN/PhDII)
Welcome, once again, to another semester and all that entails! Having recently watched "Red Cliff" (the two-part full version, not the cut edition shown in European theaters), I am very much inclined to make this a Three Kingdoms column, but nowadays any attempt on my part to write a Three Kingdoms column quickly devolves into a lengthy rant about how Cao Cao was nowhere near as villainous as he is often portrayed (good grief, the movie even gives him his own insane laughter scene), and I wish to spare you a column-sized chunk of incessant whining. If you'd like to see credible arguments in his defense, in addition to a staggering variety of clever insults directed at long-dead warlords, you may simply search for any online discussion of the period and receive more than you could ask for (Three Kingdoms discussions, I observe, tend to be facsimiles of the book itself -- Shu fans and Wei fans duke it out while Wu invariably gets sidelined, so expect a lot of dirt on both Liu Bei and Cao Cao). Let it be said, though, that "Red Cliff" is a classic and fully deserves watching, even if you can't quite tell who's who (I for one could only recognize Guan Yu from his legendary beard, plainly visible even in full armor).
This lengthy introduction is no ploy to expand the column with unnecessary banter, however! This week I intend to take a break from the usual mythology-and-biology routine and list some entertaining works for this column's readers to consider -- starting above with "Red Cliff" and continuing here with a few books, the first of which is "The Devil's Dictionary" by Ambrose Bierce (Lucifer Morningstar to his friends). Penned by a grandmaster of satire, this parody dictionary defines common concepts in apt yet bitterly cynical terms, resulting in a book that is as thought-provoking as it is bloody hilarious. The entries themselves must be seen to be believed, and I have taken the liberty to include a few here, though readers may first want to note that Mammon is a god of money and greed (as such, it should go without saying where his great temple is). Entries on commonwealth, sycophant, tariff, tortoise and many besides feature poems that are not included here for space reasons, but are among my favorites. But I digress, so without delay: CENTAUR, n. One of a race of persons who lived before the division of labor had been carried to such a pitch of differentiation, and who followed the primitive economic maxim, "Every man his own horse." The best of the lot was Chiron, who to the wisdom and virtues of the horse added the fleetness of man.
MAMMON, n. The god of the world's leading religion. The chief temple is in the holy city of New York.
PEACE, n. In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.
SAINT, n. A dead sinner revised and edited.
The second book I will recommend goes off in an entirely different direction: speculative biology. Reminiscent of Dougal Dixon's "Man After Man: An Anthropology of the Future," C. M. Kösemen's "All Tomorrows" ponders what might become of humankind's physical form in the future. Their sapience purged by an alien intelligence, descendants of Man are shown to answer the adaptive requirements of the countless planets they have been stranded on by taking myriad bizarre forms: from subterranean worm-men to flatfish-like asymmetrical crawlers, from carcass-eating, beaked giants to fist-sized, bloodsucking parasites, every major evolutionary niche is explored thoroughly and with morphological implications displayed in portraits of derivative humans. Eventually, sentience emerges once more and the everyday lives of those future men and women are revealed to us, almost unrecognizable by our standards yet conforming to their own cultural and evolutionary lineages.
It must be noted that Kösemen has also contributed to a newer book, "All Yesterdays: Unique and Speculative Views of Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals," coauthored with another artist and a paleontologist (who also heads a very eminent blog called "Tetrapod Zoology"). Another work of speculative biology, "All Yesterdays" is intended to offer alternative views on long-established (and sometimes completely untrue) cliches about prehistoric animals. (Have you ever seen a T. rex depicted sleeping or just minding its own business instead of chasing after and brutally mauling other dinosaurs? No? That's what this book is all about.) Stressing how distinctive features of modern animals are often lost during decay and how the same no doubt could have occurred to their ancient forebears, "All Yesterdays" proposes physical and behavioral traits for various extinct animals that, while not supported by preserved material, are certainly possible given what is known. The latter half of the book ("All Todays") then proceeds to imagine how modern creatures might be reconstructed by paleontologists of the distant future, resulting in terrifying swans that stab their prey with razor-sharp scythes (how else are you going to interpret wing bones with no feathers around?) and murderous assassin cats specialized to eat people (their skeletons are frequently found alongside those of humans, the obvious explanation being that cats prey on them).